Antagony is one of the many fembots who owes her origins to Botcon, the Transformers convention held annually from 1994-2016 and gave us over 150 exclusives during that run. Many of these exclusives were original female characters (Nightracer, Drag Strip (animated), Glyph. Flareup, and Flamewar come to mind). Antagony was a 1998 repaint of Inferno (the red fire ant Predacon). Over the years, her origins have been established and re-established. My favorite interpretation is that she is an ancient Predacon who can't feel pain and therefore has a maniacal penchant for inflicting it on others. Whether the motive is curiosity or jealousy, it's frightening. This new 2023 Antagony is (predictably) a repaint of the 2022 Inferno. I would have loved an original sculpt with less masculine traits. Or maybe even a Blackarachnia retooling like her modern appearances in IDW comics seem to show. But this figure still captures a certain unhinged maliciousness that I am drawn to. Let's check out Antagony below!
Antagony comes with an alternate Scavenger head (below).
This head is painted in a way that it looks correct on either the Antagony or Inferno body.
She also comes with a blaster.
Technically there is a way to display the Scavenger form with even more Scavenger-esque details than just the head. The ant head on her chest can be opened in a way that exposes (deliberate) sculpted details that mimic the original Scavenger toy design. I didn't realize this until after my photo shoot unfortunately.
The articulated jaw is my favorite feature of this toy. It's both menacing and funny.
Notice how the modern IDW design of Antagony seems to follow Blackarachnia's general model sheet.
I'm a insect fanatic so I love her beast mode.
Her blaster can be mounted on her back behind her head.
Antagony also has light-piping to illuminate her eyes red. Unfortunately the light-well is small and a strong directed point of light is needed to see the effect.
Time for a Comparison Pic!
Cheers!
That is one creepy and disturbing looking Transformer, but so cool.
ReplyDeleteThe extra head given really sold me on this. It was like Hasbro said, "well, since we're not going to release a whole OTHER figure of the Transmetal 2 character...". Sadly, even though the figure can be had for $40, the fan-made, 3D printed add-on gun is almost as much lol. Still cheaper than getting the original Botcon Antagony from decades ago...
ReplyDelete